Ph.D. theses (DBP) Titler

Exploring the Emergence, Consolidation and Reconfiguration of Legitimatory and Fiscal State-crafting

Celik, Tim Holst(Frederiksberg, 2017)

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Resume:

Since the crisis-engrossed 1970s, and especially the 1990s, ‘governance’ has become a dominant
concern and concept; notably, within particularly political science, a certain diagnosis explicitly or
implicitly focused on a shift ‘from government to governance’ has become increasingly popular. This
study examines the governance phenomenon of the post-1970/1990s period from a state-situated and
historically informed perspective. Specifically, taking initial analytical departure in an approach of the
early 1970s associated with James O’Connor, Jürgen Habermas and Claus Offe focused on the statesituated
tension-filled functional relationship between legitimation and accumulation, the study both
historically and theoretically reworks this approach and reapplies it for the post-1970s/1990s
governance period. It asks whether and to what extent governance has served as a distinctive post-
1970s/1990s state-facilitated way of bridging/altering the tension-filled relationship between
legitimation and fiscal accumulation in Western European liberal-capitalist democratic polities.

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A critical assessment of Fair Trade through the examination of the Argentinean wine industry

Staricco, Juan Ignacio(Frederiksberg, 2015)

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Resume:

This dissertation offers an assessment of Fair Trade’s transformative potential
through an empirical examination of the case of Fair Trade wine produced in
Argentina and consumed in the United Kingdom. Guided by a dialectical
understanding of the research process, the analysis is done at various levels of
generality, offering both case-specific and universal arguments about the Fair
Trade system as a whole. Theoretically, the dissertation develops a regulationist
framework based on a critical engagement with the French Regulation Approach
and the Amsterdam Project in International Political Economy. The proposed
analysis of Fair Trade as a ‘mode of regulation’ makes possible: (i) an
examination of specific ways in which this initiative institutionalizes key
socioeconomic relations, (ii) a comparison of Fair Trade with the ‘conventional’
economy and (iii) a discussion of its concrete effects. The further exploration of
Fair Trade’s political and ideological dimensions sheds light on the reasons behind
the system’s current limitations. The analysis shows that Fair Trade offers very
limited improvements compared to the conventional economy. Additionally, for
the Argentinean wine industry, Fair Trade further marginalizes the most
vulnerable groups. These findings, it is argued, are a consequence of Fair Trade’s
acritical acceptance of the main capitalist contradictions, which importantly limit
the transformative aspirations of its supporters.

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Justification and Critique, Emancipation and Coercion Towards the ‘Active Society’

Hansen, Magnus Paulsen(Frederiksberg, 2017)

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Resume:

Since the late 1980s, European welfare states and labour market regulation have
gradually but radically been transformed into ways of underpinning a more “active
society” where active usually entails paid work or activities, such as training and
qualification, that aim towards work. The thesis investigates the transformation towards
the ‘active society’ through the spectre of unemployment and how it is governed. Two
puzzles in the transformations have motivated the inquiry: firstly, the co-existence of a
plurality of different, and often contradictory, conceptions of who the unemployed are
and why they are unemployed; and secondly, the co-existence of wills to emancipate the
unemployed alongside the justification of using coercive measures towards them.
This thesis argues that if we want to understand the varieties within the transformations,
the “what?” question, it is necessary to address the “how?”; i.e., how transformations are
legitimised. Here, ideas and morality are pivotal. Inspired by French pragmatic sociology
(Boltanski and Thévenot), the ideas are approached as cities of unemployment that are
mobilised to justify and criticise policies related to the governing of unemployment. In
these situations where the question of what is the best way to govern unemployment is
put to the test, cities of unemployment enable actors to prepare and qualify the reality of
the situation for critique and justification.
Each city of unemployment is founded on a principle with specific principles to try or
test both those who govern and the subjects inhabiting each city, thus entailing a specific
understanding of what emancipating the unemployed involves, i.e., what kind of moral
subject the unemployed person is with what kind of needs and characteristics. The thesis
thus asks which cities of unemployment are mobilised in contemporary reform
processes of the governing of unemployment, how are the cities mobilised to justify and
criticise, and how do the cities sediment into instruments and institutions governing the
unemployed?